Adobe Acrobat Pro Guide

Use Adobe Acrobat Pro to manage your PDF Template Design

Adobe Acrobat Pro is typically the best tool to create and edit PDF templates, although Adobe requires a subscription and can be somewhat challenging to learn.

Adobe Acrobat Pro: https://get.adobe.com/reader/
The Alternatives to Adobe Acrobat are: Nitro Pro: https://www.gonitro.com/pdf, Sejda: https://www.sejda.com/pdf-forms, UPDF: https://updf.com.

🚨 The PDF files can be notoriously hard to edit and manage. Although Adobe owns and maintains the PDF file format, even their own PDF editing tool (Adobe Acrobat Pro) has many known quirks and bugs, which can be extremely frustrating at times. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to Watchtower support if you get stuck during this process. support@yourwatchtower.com 714-316-973

Getting started with Adobe Acrobat

Open your PDF template in Adobe Acrobat

File > Open > [Select Your PDF]

Use the “Prepare a Form” tool, which is where new form inputs are created and edited.
From the All Tools list, select “Prepare a Form”.
Notice form inputs are now clickable and editable. If the PDF template does not already have inputs, add them using a Text Field Form Component. Make sure it’s a “Text Field” and not just basic label text.

Inputs Labeling & Font Sizing

The most important step in preparing your PDF template is to label the input fields using the “Field Properties” dialogue box. Proper field labeling makes the mapping process much faster. To label PDF field inputs, double-click an input to bring up the “Field Properties” dialogue box to adjust:

General: Field Name - This Field Name will appear in the Watchtower mapping process. This label helps describe the answer data. Make sure this Field Name label is clear and concise so that choosing this specific label from a larger list of labels later on makes sense.

Appearance: Font Size - This will adjust the font size of the answer text when it renders in the PDF form question input. If the lengths of anticipated answers will vary, it’s better to use a smaller font size.

Long Text Mapping

Remove Stacked lines designed for hand-written answers: Older PDF designs often have stacks of blank lines designed for hand-written paragraph answers. It’s best to remove stacked lines, and make the input a solid blank box.

Options: Multi-line - wraps longer paragraph-style text answers into a multi-line format, so they don’t run off the page. If the length of anticipated answers is variable, this is important to turn on.

Input Types

Nearly all of your input should be “Text Input” type, but in some cases, Radio and Checkbox inputs can be used.
Radio and Checkbox PDF Form Inputs: In order to map correctly, the Watchtower Form Answer text must match exactly to the Radio Button Choice text in the Properties Dialogue Box. The process is the same for Checkboxes.

Signatures: Even Signatures collected in Watchtower should be mapped using the “Text Input” field types. To make sure the Signature appears big enough when it renders in the final, increase the size of the text input and the size of the font in Adobe Acrobat.

🚨 Do not use any of the other input types. Watchtower can only map data into Text, Checkbox, and Radio. Watchtower forms questions for Date, Address, Personnel Name, Location Name, and Signature should all be mapped to “Text Field” inputs in Adobe Acrobat.

Troubleshooting, Gotchas, and Things to Watch Out For

🚨 Remember to save progress often to avoid losing work. Adobe is known to crash at random times.

🚨 Adobe has an optical character recognition (OCR) feature that can automatically detect and transcribe printed text into clickable characters. Unfortunately, this feature often replaces letters with the wrong characters, and can make the PDF form unmanageable over time. It’s best to turn this feature off.

Updated on: 12/01/2026

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